Inexplicable jade expressions
by EmitRemmus
Summary: 'Lily Evans and her pointed feet and small delicate features, naked pale skin and splattered freckles across her shoulders that James dreams of tracing patterns in...' A series of musings, JamesxLily. Rated for language. Spread the love- R/R!
1. Work of Art

**Lily Evans… a work of art.**

Lily Evans… and the path of her spine and her angled limbs, she's a sculpture of freckled marble, the creases in her elbows and behind her knees, where James longs to bury his nose.

Lily Evans… and her pointed feet and small delicate features, naked pale skin and splattered freckles across her shoulders that James dreams of tracing patterns in.

Lily Evans… and the knob at the back of her neck, the light, downy hairs there that James would die to just smooth with a finger, push aside with his lips.

Lily Evans… and the look in her eyes sometimes, when she's reading poetry, utterly in love with the words of Byron or Shelley, that look in her bright green eyes that James wishes was for him.


	2. Duo

**Duo: Two persons commonly associated with eachother; a couple.**

Abbott and Costello.

Anthony and Cleopatra.

Hall and Oates.

Potter and Evans.

James and Lily.

Lily.

Lily…


	3. A day of Lily Evans

**A day of Lily Evans.**

She's wicked, so wicked in the morning, drinking tea over her newspaper, (two sugars, no milk) a little crease of concentration between her lovely eyebrows, absently biting her thumbnail, yawning and putting her elbow in the butter as she reaches for the jam.

'Fuck!' Lily says prettily, and allows Kingsley Shacklebolt to blot it off with a napkin, laughing at something he rumbles in her ear.

When Kingsley gets a little jam on his chin, she wipes it away with a finger, and, giggling, puts the finger in her mouth. But when James gets a little jam on _his _chin, she gives him a long, disgusted look, and when he pauses, toast in his mouth, wondering why Evans is giving him evils, she points it out, acidly,

'You've got jam on your chin, Potter.' There goes the curling lip.

_I want you I want you I want you_, James thinks.

'Mmph,' James says, and swallows his toast, 'thanks, Evans.' He wipes the jam off with his finger and puts it in his mouth. Lily looks utterly grossed out and turns back to Kingsley, shaking her head.

Leaving James, once again, lost.

She's awesome, _really_ awesome in the afternoon, walking from one classroom to the next, surrounded by her friends, her teeth caught on her lip, or shining in her gorgeous grin, hips moving inside her skirt, hair always in motion, bouncing or swinging or falling or spreading, softly, over her face as she reads, a curtain between her and the world, so that James can forget, with her sharp gaze for once veiled, that she detests him, and imagine instead how she'd look after dinner in their house, when their small ginger children are tucked up in bed.

She's cool, super cool in the evening, when James manages to catch sight of her, studying by the fire or in the library, often James's excuse to sit near or beside her…

'Potter, do you mind?' Her beautiful eyes are weary, and carry shadows under them that, to James, do nothing but make the emerald shine brighter, 'I really have to study right now. I don't have time to hit you, if that's what you want.'

James feels a mature response die on his tongue, taken aback at her lack of discretion and wit.

'Hit me? Why would I want you to hit me?' He says, like the teenage boy he is. And Lily sighs and rolls her eyes up to the ceiling briefly, before standing up. Her book falls to the floor.

'Here. Let me,' James says hurriedly, and dives.

'Leave it, Potter.' Lily snaps, and bends at the same time. Their heads crack together. 'Argh!' Lily straightens, pinching the bridge of her nose and screwing her eyes up.

'Shit, sorry Evans-'

'I said LEAVE IT, Potter!' She snatches her book from his helpless hands, slings her bag over her shoulder and disappears around a corner. James stands, hands still slightly outstretched, staring at the spot where her flaming hair disappeared.

_I love you, Lily Evans._

Because she's amazing, infinitely amazing at night, her motionless marker on the Map, a single wall divides James from her, object of his dreams. Sometimes, James strains his ears, past Frank Longbottom's snoring, and thinks he can hear her gentle breaths, the intake and outtake of air through her delicate nostrils. James pictures her, stirring softly, her mind a mystery to that of an adolescent boy.

He knows that she wears an oversized mens t-shirt to bed, because he saw it once in the common room, when she'd forgotten a book, and it was blue, and had the Beatles on it. He knows the reality, and loves it, because everything about her is perfect. The shapeless t-shirt, however, does not feature in James's waking dreams. There, Evans laughs forever, possibly in some lacy underwear, more often in nothing at all.

He wonders, at night, when Sirius is asleep and won't laugh at his expressions, he wonders how far the freckles extend down her body, and whether anyone apart from Evans knows. Apart from her dorm-mates of course, and that sets James off on another train of thought…

Because he's just a teenage boy.


	4. Infatuation

**Infatuation: A foolish or all-absorbing passion.**

Sometimes James thinks he can sense through walls, where Lily Evans walks, follow the trail of awesomeness she leaves, the smell of her shampoo and the sound of her laughter.

Sometimes, James looks up, in the middle of a joke or laughing with his mates, and sees her, green gaze piercing him, red hair swinging as she turns her back, soft lips curling, eyes narrowing, contempt and superiority and hatred in her inexplicable jade expressions.

She always leaves him speechless, the punch-line of his joke lost, mouth open, transfixed by her movements. It doesn't matter that she loathes him. It doesn't matter that she hits him when no-one else bothers to. All that matters is that she is the girl he wants and can never have, she is Lily Evans and she is _hot_.

Once, in Fifth Year, James is walking past the Prefects bathroom and sees, through the crack of the slightly open door, Lily Evans in just a towel, steam curling her hair into wispy ringlets around her ears, massaging moisturiser into the freckled skin of her leg.

He walks on before she can look up and see him, and is late for Charms that afternoon because it is _imperative_ that he have a mighty wank or he might actually explode.

When he finally gets to Charms, Lily turns with the rest of the class to see who has come in. James sees it in her eyes, it is not James Potter standing there, closing the door behind him, it is a _vile worm_.

But even as she throws her acid looks at him, he is admiring the set of her shoulders in the white blouse, her blue bra, translucently visible, and how she's pulled her hair up, in a pale green clasp, so that some of it falls down around her delicate ears.

By the time James reaches his seat, he's thoroughly in need of a wank all over again.

Lily Evans…


	5. Essence

**Essence: 1) a perfume, a scent. 2) The basic, real and invariable nature of a thing or of its significant individual features.**

As James noses down the gap between her ribs, he marvels at the smell of Lily Evans, the smell that is still so delicious, even after five years. It can be found all over her body, but is most noticeable in the places that belong to James alone.

In the hot niches of her neck, and in the hairless space behind her ears, and between her freckled breasts, and under the small shadow of her bellybutton, and all over her smooth back and behind her knees, and sweet and deep between her white thighs.

The smell is a light evanescent sweetness, that James finds on his hands all day after making love to Lily, in his cramped office he absently rubs his nose and a tiny trail of her scent drifts into his mind to be nudged into a daydream.


	6. Agerasia

**Agerasia: A lack of the signs of age.**

Lily has never changed.

The woman in James's arms is the girl on the Hogwarts Express. She's still the pumpkin juice thrown in his face, still the smell of vanilla shampoo, still the long, freckled limbs and green gaze, though the green is no longer acidic when it pierces James, for it has faded into love over the years, into a soft emerald.

Childbirth has not stretched her body out of shape, merely enlarged her nipples and darkened them, a contrast with her skin that James worships by night, in the lamplight of their cottage bedroom. Her hair swings as vibrantly as it ever has, in the small, pretty kitchen where she listens to the radio and hums as she works, and where Harry bangs a spoon against the table.

None of this is any particular wonder, really, she's only twenty-one.

But James remembers the burnt toast and gone-off milk in the mould-ceilinged flat that they first moved into together, eighteen years old. It was James who burnt the toast, and Lily who forgot the milk on the sideboard in the sun.

Now, James burns the toast, and Lily scrapes the charcoal off into the sink, with her smooth hands by her flat abdomen and her bright curls falling over her face, and James kisses the back of her neck apologetically, and loves her.


	7. Evanescent

**Evanescent: 1) Vanishing, fading away, fleeting. 2) tending to become imperceptible, barely perceptible.**

In the morning, before she wakes, James watches the evanescent outline of Lily's burning hair against the sunrise. She sleeps on her front, though the doctor says it's bad for her breasts and she should stop soon. Lily says that soon she wouldn't be able to sleep on her front, and she'd rather make the most of it while she can.

James doesn't care, not about anything, as long as Lily is comfortable and rested. He still believes it was stress, last time, that caused the sudden twist of Lily's face and the smashed plate on the floor as she dropped it and sank into a crouch. He remembers the sharp smell of that day, mixing with the rhubarb crumble in the oven, and the limpness of Lily's hand in the too-bright lights of the Muggle hospital, and the way she never cried, just woke and asked for the baby, was it alright, was it alright.

This time is different. James feels it in the firm curving of Lily's belly, the strength of her conviction, the shine in her hair and eyes and laughter. He feels it in his gut, his manhood, his incipient fatherhood. He feels it in the floating strands of Lily's hair, glowing gold against the orange sky, and in his child, solid and real and happening inside Lily. Not about to fade away.


	8. Claret

**Claret: 1) red wine. 2) blood.**

On the day that James brought Lily a bottle of red wine, that was the day when it happened. In their bright little life, objects replace dates and times of events, in the same way that the breakfast things are spread over James's work papers on the table, and when something out of the ordinary occurs, it solidifies with some small detail, by which James will always remember it.

Like the day they fed the ducks in a little canal, and it was raining, and James had to flick the soggy bread from his fingers, laughing, and Lily's lips had the taste of the sky on them. And James got down on one knee on the wet concrete walkway, and Lily's single tear fell past her shining smile, and she whispered her 'yes' into his mouth with his hand in her soaking dark orange hair, and the small, silver ring already at home on her finger.

On the day that James brought Lily a bottle of red wine, that was the day when it happened. Lily's swelling stomach is a moon, a beach, a landscape where James's fingers take a walk, where he presses his ear and hand to feel the underwater vibrations, the strange, deep echo of Lily's heartbeat, and the restless limbs of their child, never comfortable these days, never enough room, its head against its mother's pelvis and its feet pressed into her diaphragm.

Lily is reading on the sofa when James comes in, bump straining against her pyjamas, and she laughs when he presents her with the bottle of wine, says all the obvious things, about alcohol and the baby. But he pours her a tiny amount, dilutes it with water, and she swirls the pinkish liquid in her glass and smiles softly, cheers, the sweet small clink, here's to us.

They have an takeaway Indian that evening, because the doctor says it's one of the things that will speed up Lily's labour, she's a week overdue already. The other thing prescribed was sex. Last night they made love for the first time in nine months, oh-so carefully, her swollenness pressing against James, and not for the first time he told her, swirling patterns over the child's head, you're beautiful like this.

Tonight they curl up on the sofa-bed in the living-room, because Lily tires herself climbing the stairs, and read poetry in the soft light, _she walks in beauty, like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies_, and as James reads she inhales sharply, suddenly, hand on her belly, says, it's coming.

And come it does, Lily screaming tearlessly, determined, on her back, red hair glowing with her passionate tireless heaving, and come it does, the most natural thing in the world, and James holds him before Lily does, kisses both their scrunched up faces, smoothes Lily's hair off her shining forehead, I love you.

Even now, as James looks down at the back of his hand, four small crescent scars lie white against his skin, where Lily dug her nails in deep, drawing rubies of James's blood, verification of his reverence.


	9. Alexithymia

**Alexithymia: Inability to express emotion in words.**

'Lily?'

'Mm.'

But there's a way Lily's red-gold tresses are strewn like autumn leaves over James's chest, and exactly how her pale, speckled shoulder is bare under his hand and her arm is thrown over his hip, and these are things that can never be put into coherent sentences and explained in a way that won't make James blush and Lily put her hand over his mouth.

'Lily?'

'Mm?'

But her fine-boned hand hangs from her elegant wrist in a feminine algorithm that James spends hours attempting to justify, watching Lily's ridiculously beautiful pulse flutter in her ridiculously beautiful neck, and finally gives it up as something he will never understand, and can only admire in the sweet, strong light that the sun lends to his silent adolescent struggle.

'Lily?'

'Mmm.'

The dust motes dance a lazy spinning minuet over Lily's skin.

'Nothing.'


	10. Avarice

**Avarice: 1) jealousy. 2) excessive or insatiable desire or greed.**

It's the way she looks at him.

Lily's green eyes sparkling, she punches James Potter, and Severus inhales triumphantly, but it's only play, and her fingers linger on his arm.

It's the comfortable brushing of their shoulders as they study side by side. It's their laughter, Lily's so shameless and joyful, throwing back her head, lips full of shining teeth. It's James Potter pushing his pathetic glasses up his nose, watching her, drinking her, every breath she takes igniting the smugness in him at finally owning her.

Severus watches from a distance, watching Potter watching Lily. _His _Lily. They kiss, and Severus feels his white-knuckled fingers tighten on the doorframe.

_Potter_. The name is spat on the floor as Severus stalks down corridors. _Potter _in his angry, clicking footsteps on the stone, _Potter_ in his unfortunate heartbeat.

It's their love.

_Hatred. Anathema. Odium. Rancor. Antipathy. Acrimony. Loathing._

There are so many words for hate, and only one word for love.

And it's in the clench of Severus's hand, his narrow eye under his fringe, lurking around the corner to catch a glimpse of Lily, as mid-laugh she looks up at him, half hiding reluctantly in the shadow. His shame at spying heats his ears and his skin around the collar, _stupid stupid stupid_. Lily looks at him, and a hint of something automatic kindles in her face, delighted. Then she blinks and the momentary smile-flicker vanishes. It takes with it a piece of Severus's heart.

He turns from her gaze and doesn't stop running until he trips and falls.

It's the way she looks at him.


	11. Initial

**Initial: 1) Of, pertaining to, or occurring at the beginning. 2) The first letter of a name.**

The first time James kisses Lily, they are fourteen, and she has just saved him from being strangled by Dolohov and Nott.

'OI!' someone yells.

James, purple-faced with struggling, catches a glimpse under Nott's arm of a red-headed goddess descending with her arm outstretched before a BANG sounds. The bodies of his attackers fall heavily on top of him.

'Thanks, Evans,' He mumbles, crawling out. She yanks him to his feet with her surprising strength.

'You would have done the same for me,' she says with a cool twist of her mouth.

'What did you do to them?' James stares at Dolohov ad Nott. As he watches, the latter breaks wind loudly.

'A simple hex,' Lily smiles, 'it should be easy to remove but it's not. I'm betting they'll have a hard time finding the counter-spell.'

'Why?' James finds himself smiling back. He can never help himself around Evans.

She narrows her eyes. She thinks he is taking the piss.

'It's easy… Instead of just simulating a fart sound, like most people would do, I jinxed them so that the gas is formed by reacting with food in their stomachs. Basically, it's a real fart.'

'The more they eat, the more they…'

'Precisely.'

'That's neat. Shoulda used it on Goyle though. He had _six_ helpings of pie last night, I watched.'

Lily laughs. James swallows, nervous in the silence that follows.

'I'd better go,' she says, pushing her wand up her sleeve, 'got double Potions next. Can't afford to miss the start.'

'Right.' James can't remember what he has next. _Look away, you moron, look away from her face before she thinks you're weird_.

'Well,' Lily hitches her bag up and give a little wave of her fingers, 'later, Potter,'

'Yeah, look, thanks,' James burbles, 'thanks a lot for saving my life.' He takes a step closer to her. Her freckles are like cinnamon sprinkles on a sundae.

She lifts one eyebrow a fraction, still smiling.

'I said, it's fine. You're a prat, Potter, but I wouldn't go so far as to let you die.'

He just looks at her very green eyes, closer than ever.

'Hello?' Lily peers at him, moving back one one foot, 'catch you later.'

James kisses her.

They kiss in a school corridor, amidst the unconscious Slytherins.

It's swift and clumsy and warm and sweet for three entire seconds, then Lily's pushed him away.

'Oi!' Her cheeks flush, and the green fire is back in her eyes.

'Shit, sorry,' James looks away from her wildly, searching for his bag.

'Potter!'

'I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!' He finds his bag and stands to face her, hands in the air.

'You kissed me!' She seems frozen with fury. 'No-one's ever kissed me before!'

James doesn't know what to say.

'Oh.' He finally manages.

'Not once! Not ever!'

James is lost now.

Lily pokes him with a sharp finger until his back is against the wall.

'You tosser, James Potter! YOU STOLE MY FIRST KISS!'

James flees.

A bird made of intricately folded paper lands on James's desk.

Along one wing is scrawled James's initials. He unfolds it.

_3 Broomsticks on Saturday. 12 o clock._

_L.E._


End file.
